Civil Serpents and the Affair of the Irish Border

A year ago nearly to the day I wrote about how we are governed not by our politicians but by their advisers, the “Mandarins of Whitehall” – here, if you want to refresh your memories. In the wake of the Barnier speech, I briefly touched upon this matter here. Now, after the omnishambles that was Ms May’s meeting with Juncker, and with more news coming out about it, we can observe the fine hands of our and the EU’s Mandarins at work.

The shenanigans of the Taoiseach about the border of the ROI with NI were nicely orchestrated by the EU, whose Mr Tusk had just been to Dublin and who was actually gloating about this. A rather shocking proof is that the ROI government ‘forbade’ Ms May to inform the DUP of this issue (see here). Just let that sink in…and then ask yourselves if the Taoiseach would’ve done that had he not had cover from the EU.

Now observe our secret government, the Remainer Whitehall Mandarins, riding to the rescue. On the one hand we read of a former diplomat who bemoans the fact that, for once, we hadn’t bickered with the EU but instead bickered between ourselves. On the other we have the RBC (Remainer Broadcasting Corporation) trying to belittle the DUP politicians: they’re just dumb and don’t understand the fine language of the EU ‘diplomats’, the ‘facts’ as presented by ‘officials’.

Across the MSM, you can detect our civil serpents at work: it’s always ‘officials’ who brief the hacks about such ‘facts’: nameless officials and we’re never told which Ministry they represent. When our MSM really want to make a point they quote an “EU official” – what our EU enemies say has more weight because our establishment wants us to stay in the EU by any means, even treason.

In spite of all these underhand dealings behind closed doors and in secrecy, the formidable Mrs Arlene Foster dropped the hammer – on Juncker, on Tusk, the EU, the Taoiseach and last but not least Ms May herself.

While many are demanding that Ms May now resign, while many others are gloating here and in the EU, others say that surely we must walk away now. Remember Ms May’s dictum that no deal would be better than a bad deal? Some commentators however are finally turning their eyes towards those who are always in the shadows, whose names we seldom get to hear: the Mandarins. It is they who run the departments, who advise and counsel their Ministers. They are supposed to be impartial, without political bias. The reality is different, as this latest story emphasises.

The question is: are these Mandarins proposing and helping to implement Tory policies on Brexit? More importantly: are they working flat out to make Brexit happen? The answer must be a resounding No.

This latest example, where EU papers are leaked to select people, where one of the parties most certainly affected didn’t even get to read that statement because another government backed by the EU forbids it, where the Brexit Minister seems to have been clueless unless he’s also obeyed the President of the ROI: all this demonstrates that the EU bureaucracy and our own Mandarins – who are our servants, we pay them! – are working hand-in-hand to thwart the decision of 17 million people. It is they who brief the MSM. It is they who decide which Minister gets to see which position paper. It is they who write those papers and make them as anodyne as possible. It is they who tried to create ‘facts’ by selectively leaking of a paper to the press before the May-Juncker meeting while withholding this vital information from the party most affected.

Why do you think it is that the Brexiteers inside and outside Parliament are now celebrating Mrs Arlene Foster, Leader of the DUP? Because she has shown that she’s got more cojones than Juncker, Tusk, Varadkar, Barnier and Mr Davis combined. She has put her foot down, thus preventing what would have been totally unacceptable to the whole country, a sleight-of-hand ‘treaty’ which would have kept us in the Common Market and the Customs Union, i.e. in the EU (see this chilling report). Staying under the subjugation of the ECJ – that would just have been the cherry on the cake, slipped in while “we” weren’t looking. That was what the Remainer Mandarins here and the EU bureaucrats planned for Ms May to sign on Monday. Our oh-so-wise Mandarins would later tell the PM and their Ministers that there’s nothing they can do about it – just as they have been telling all the various Ministers since 1973 that ‘it’s an EU rule, we must comply’. And comply they did.

That’s why the Brexit negotiations are a shambles – it’s not just because Ms May is weak and Mr Davis has lost the plot: it’s because their Mandarins are giving them wrong, biased and skewed advice so we end up remaining in the EU. There are some civil servants in the lower ranks who must be seething by now, but as long as Sir Humphrey Appleby rules (his name actually is Sir Jeremy Heywood, do read his wiki entry, it’s…fascinating!) what chance have they!

Therefore – let’s hear it for Mrs Arlene Foster! She has shown that a principled politician can ride roughshod over spineless politicians and oh-so-clever Mandarins.

Let’s stop trying to appease both our home-grown remainiacs and the EU Brexit negotiators. Let’s simplify the procedure: walk out! Above all, let’s never give in to ‘Project Fear’, the project created in Whitehall, by Mandarins:

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

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Viv, your magnificent “Never give in ” bit is in quotation marks. If this is a quote, do you know who said it? Sounds Churchillian.

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Hi Tony –
that quote is indeed pure Sir Winston Churchill!
I left the attribution off on purpose, in the hope that readers would ask. Others might well have recognised it anyway.
Needless to say, he’d not have let himself as PM be treated by the Junkers et al as they’re treating Ms May, and especially not by the Irish PM.
Also needless to say he’d have given short shrift to the remoaners in Parliament and the MSM.

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This goes some way to explaining what the ‘Establishment’ is and why there is no apparent distinction between Labour and Conservatives when they get into power, and why nothing really ever changes.
Voters think they have a choice when it comes to the ballot boxes, but in reality they are all the same puppets, wearing different coloured rosettes, but controlled by the true rulers of this country.
We live in a ‘fake democracy’; its all a sham.
Nothing will ever change unless a party like UKIP can promise to shake up the civil service and rock the Establishment to its core.

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8 months ago

Phil O'Sophical

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It is often said that 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual. Same could be said of Yes, Minister. It made us laugh at the conniving ways of the civil serpents (I do love that description) and weak ministers as caricatures, rather than recognising it as a deadly serious and dangerous truth. Clever propaganda really; Sir Humphrey was admired for his cunning rather than reviled for deceit and manipulation.

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A `deal’ with the EU is in Mrs may’s mind the only way to salvage her appalling premiership. She wants to be remembered for having negotiated our exit on `favourable’ terms not for having walked away without a deal. To us that would be a better legacy but to her remainer mind that is not what she wants to be remembered for. For many politicians, and for Tories in particular, the order of priority is 1) personal vanity 2) party and 3) country last. The overriding dictates of 1) cause her to give up ever more red lines.

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May has shown to be a totally unprincipled and incompetent person. At the bottom of this is the desire to keep the UK in the SM and CU despite her saying in the Lancaster House speech that the UK would be leaving the SM and CU. The ideas behind “Alignment” is that it is the mechanism to keep the UK in the SM & CU; the next step is to impose this solution on the whole of the UK and not just NI. The Brexiteers must not tolerate this and I hope Arlene Foster will not accept this. May has… Read more »

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Preaching to the converted here. Why do politicians always drag everything down to the lowest common denominator? We’ve had a long line of hopelessly incompetent political leaders, if they’d tried to destroy our country on purpose, they couldn’t have done a better job: I can only assume they’re doing it on purpose. I never thought I’d despise anybody as much as Tony Blair, but Theresa May is getting to be about level. Sharia May has been grovelling to Islam and telling us how wonderful it is and in return, I’ve just read, they’ve attempted to kill her. Maybe Sharia Appeaser… Read more »

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I believe Ms May has become totally indoctrinated into the appease-attitude, she cannot change the habit of nearly a decade of her Mandarin indoctrination.
And that’s the point I am trying to make: look at who is doing this. The ministers are only the mouthpieces of the vast, hidden entity that is the civil service.

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The ministers are meant to be our representatives not the Whitehall Mandarins.

So what you’re saying then, is that we don’t have a democracy at all and I totally agree.

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